Archive

Ireland v UK 2018

Judgement of ECHR | 20 March 2018

ECHR have rejected application by Irish Government to revise the original judgement in the Hooded Men case ROI v UK 1978. The 1978 judgement found that the treatment constituted inhuman & degrading treatment, but not torture. Today the ECHR has upheld that judgement 6-1 (Judge O'Leary dissenting- se...

Release of proposal on information redaction

PFC | 05 April 2017

Documents submitted to British and Irish governments: A proposed model for Information Redaction under the Stormont House Agreement. Released to the public domain at a seminar at QUB on 4th April 2017.

Event to Mark International Day in Support of Victims of Torture

| 23 June 2017

26th June marks the International Day in Support of the Victims of Torture. The PFC, along with our colleagues in CAJ, Amnesty International and Matrix Chambers marked the day by outlining evidence of torture carried out by the RUC and British Army during the 1970's in the north of Ireland at an eve...

Event "Beating the natives"

Mon 14 Aug, Museum of Free Derry | 11 August 2017

“Throughout Britain's colonial history, in Kenya, Yemen, Malaya and elsewhere, London broke all accepted moral and legal standards by torturing its opponents. Ireland was no different with British 'water-boarding' detainee thirty years before the USA did the same in Guantanamo. Using statements made...

Ireland v. UK: Revisiting the Treatment of the 'Hooded Men'

Philip Leach, Jurist | 06 December 2014

The Irish government announced this week that it is applying to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to re-open the case it instigated in the early 1970s against the UK government concerning the treatment in detention of fourteen IRA suspects, following their arrest by the British army under in...

The Hooded Men

CAJ and PFC Press release | 24 November 2014

The Committee on the Administration (CAJ) and the Pat Finucane Centre (PFC) welcome Amnesty International’s call to the Irish Government that it seeks to re-open the case it took against the UK in relation to the use of the "five interrogation techniques" inflicted on 14 men when internment was intr...

The Paris massacre that time forgot, 51 years on

France24 | 18 October 2012

Fifty-one years to the day, French President François Hollande has recognised the October 17, 1961 massacre of Algerian protesters in Paris. Historian Jean-Luc Einaudi talks to FRANCE 24 about one of the darkest chapters of French colonial history.

The Hooded Men

Press release KRW LAW LLP | 24 November 2011

KRW LAW LLP is instructed by a number of The Hooded Men, those interned by the British government in August 1971. These 12 men became the guinea pigs in the British army’s deployment of ‘deep interrogation’ or what has become known as The Five Techniques. These techniques had been developed in the p...

France remembers Algerian massacre 50 years on

The "Hooded Men"- Irish State case

In 1978 the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) held that the British government had violated Article 3 of the European Commission on Human Rights in their treatment of 14 men in 1971. These "Hooded Men" had been selected for 5 techniques of "Deep Interrogation" - white noise, wall standing/ stress positions, sleep deprivation, bread and water diet, and hooding....

Strasbourg-Brief for Attorney General

Brief for the British Attorney General (AG) in preparation for the 'Irish state case' (the Hooded Men) from September 1972 from DS10 (the Defence Secretariat at the MoD in London). Of interest is the disinformation provided to the AG, the most senior law officer in Britain, by the Ministry of Defence. At para 4 it is claimed that Ballykelly only...